Good PAF tone

[greenfingers]

I don't think it's either's fault. Amps/guitars/pickups/speakers/etc. all have little frequency peaks/notches/resonances/etc. and it's just a matter of the right combination.

yea everyone is looking for the peas & carrots combination, but some times you get the Ike & Tian combo insted the first poster on this thread asked for clips of what a good p.a.f sound is, well this partnership of Green/les paul/orange Matamp is up there with the best http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxux5LdmjQU

[David Schwab]

you should call that guitar a "Strattelson"

I called it the "Alchemy"

However it doesn't sound like a bunch of guitars... just sort of like a Tele with the Strat inbetween settings.

It just looks like a bunch of guitars.

[Possum]

Peter Green

Well you noticed I used a clip from that video in my sampling of BEST classic PAF tones. I can get that bridge tone with the new product. I'm going to wind one this weekend to 8.6K to see if it gets closer to his since supposedly was that hot. I love that chimey acoustic tone, the amp is the other half of whats going on. At first I thought he was playing through the Fenders you see in the end of the video. What great tone he has, no pedals, not much gain, just pure guitar and amp and no bull. Plus a ton of talent and great fingers....

[Possum]

...

Well, when it comes to the silverface Fender amps, most look at what they did as a big flaw. They used a bunch of real tiny caps to keep the amps from oscilating out of control. Even with blackfacing my DR and removing those caps it still has an annoying peak thing going on. I supposed it could be tweaked out but I'm not an amp tech and its fine for gigs anyway and most who play through it always comment on what good tone it has. I have same year Vibrolux and Princeton reverb and neither one of them have that problem, luckily.

[David Schwab]

Dave, did you ever see one of the solid state Fender amps that CBS made after they bought Fender?

I had one for a short time (someone gave it to me) back in the 70's. I think they even called it a Twin or something. I had just the amp part that someone removed from the cab.

It was AWFUL! There were some good sounding solid state amps, and that sure wasn't one of them. It got this really annoying clean tone, and when turned up was the worst grating distortion you ever heard.. since I'm sure it was never made to distort.

I was going to keep it for comic value, and I don't even remember what happened to it.. and I guess I didn't care.

[Possum]

....

I vaguely remeber them, but no one I knew bought that stuff. They tried again in the early 80's and made a hybrid amp with tubes in there somewhere, I think the preamp section. I bought one, it sounded good in the store, but it had this annoying awful high end thing you'd hear in the distortion that just didn't cut it for me. I took it back and got a RealTube brand amp I think it was called, another hybrid, the clean part of the amp sounded good if you used it clean or with pedals, the distortion sounded not so great. Sold it on Ebay, they still hold their value and were decent amps for the money. I've never seen any of the hybrid Fenders I tried, wonder what it was, some kind of deluxe reverb thing, total bad idea.

[greenfingers]

I called it the "Alchemy"

I bet it turn's lead fingers into those of golden god's

[greenfingers]

I can get that bridge tone with the new product. I'm going to wind one this weekend to 8.6K to see if it gets closer to his since supposedly was that hot

I would love to hear a clip of that new one your gona wind. Where did you find out about the pickup reading? do you know anymore about the bridge, i think i heard that it had a A2 in it, but i my be wrong.

Let us know how it turns out,..... well if it nail's that sound i'm sure we'll hear about it

[salvarsan]

Dave, did you ever see one of the solid state Fender amps that CBS made after they bought Fender?

...
It was AWFUL!

Oh, you mean the Zodiac Series whose production
run was generously stated as two years!

I heard them when Washington Music Center got the full line in 1969.
They were so bad that WMC's secretarial staff dissed them.

-drh

[RedHouse]

...From what i can find Jimmy changed his bridge around the beginning of 72, You can hear a change in the voice of his guitar in zeppelin albums after this.

zeppelin IV was the last time the original bucker was recorded, after that his bridge was thinner and less woody to my ears,... like you said redhouse its just an opinion. But the change in sound gave jimmy a more telecaster sound from his les paul, and we all know jimmy's soft spot for a tele.

Just compare zeppelin II&IV, over, houses of the holy & physical graffiti, the first two are thick and robust, the other two, and after pickup change are, thinner and lighter not in a bad way, it just does not fill as much space, and i dont think that is just down to the production....

I would take all that with a grain of salt myself, the reason I point to live recordings is it's the only place we can be sure he was using a particular guitar/pickup or amp combination most of the time, and even then, as with the SRTS soundtrack one cannot be sure because he heavily edited both the film and the audio tracks after the fact in post production.

Another thing we really don't know regarding Page is if the pickups are indeed the original PAF pickups. He had a full time guitar tech back in the day and we reaslly don't know if the pickups were changed over the years, we can see they had different knobs sometimes and the old stiry about switches under the pickguard (no pic;s back that up though). The change in sound may have been in his guitar at the request of Page, a pickup swap by the tech wouldn't be out of the question as we know he swapped speakers out of certain Marshall cabinets to get one he liked. In fact I have always wondered if the two black pickups in the EDS1275 were not just sans covers, but maybe off another guitar alltogether, just a thought, but wouldn't put it past him.

Page was indeed not a one-guitar guy in the studio, I tend to not cite the albums as Les Paul/PAF references, he used a lot of guitars in the studio including his 'Burst, a burst fitted with a Bigsby (rumor has it as an ex Keith Richards burst), his Black Beauty, two known Tele's, a Vox and Fender 12 string, one (known) a Strat, an Alembic, and nobody knows if he used the EDS1275 in studio, but as an ex-studio musician my money has it that he used a lot more guitars than he fessed-up to.

A lot of times we hear Tele and we think Les Paul like I recall for years back in the 70's we all thought the solo on Stairway was a Les Paul until Page came out and said in an interview it was a Tele, but then again, he (Page) was very much into dis-information regarding his setup's, dunno why really, as if having his gear would make us play and sound like him? not!.

I would also attribute a major portion of his change in voice, to the amp work he was getting too, he was wanting more headroom less fuzz/dirt and had his Marshall's "worked on" it's known that they changed the transformers and fitted KT88 output tubes which would add more clean tone at stage volume. There again Page used many amps in the studio, and live in the early years, there are photo's and video of him using Vox amps, he used Rickenbacker amps on a tour, he used that well known Supro in the studio all the time, there are pic's of him with Marshall Major's (at the Bath festival I believe), yep he used a lot of gear besides the Les Paul/1959SLP Marshall combination we all attribute to his sound.

...Redhouse have you had a go on a super 100jh head? you say you would like a 1959 plexi, well this is the Hendrix plexi, and with a name like Redhouse i'm sure it may intrest you...

No I have not played through one yet. I build and play my own amps anymore, since the 90's really and I sold off my last Marshall's a few years back. I had an early 70's 1959SLP (metal face) Marshall which had a reworked power supply and V1+V2 cathode bias matched to a fine specimen of a Plexi that a bandmate had back in 79, for years I used that as my point-of-reference until I built my own from scratch, sold off the 1959SLP and an '83 JCM800 with 6550's (which I now really regret selling).

PAF's sure like a Plexi dont they

Yes, and IMHO they sure like a long plate 12AX7 preamp stage wide open like in a Plexi/Ali.

[greenfingers]

I agree with what you say, Jimmy was not a one guitar man. If you want a pic of jimmys les paul with switches under the pick guard try and find a copy of "the guitar magazine" april 1998 vol 8 no 7 . it's on his no2 les paul serial no 91703...... not his famous no 1.
I went with them albums only a a reference because its evident where he uses a paul. like you said, other guitars are all over zepp albums. "ten years gone" was played on a maple neck "White" strat, "since ive been loving you" solo was a tele, and the supro amp is said to be a "secret weapon" used in parallel with other amps. He had a lot of tricks to get the sound he wanted, but i do think his no 1 guitar voice changed around 72.

He did throw alot of misinformation about, but thats Jimmy been all mysterious again. a friend of mine got to know Jimmy by way of selling him a lot of Alistair Crowley artefacts around 74, i have read christmas cards from Jimmy to him and you wouldn't think it was christmas by the picture on the card, all gothic looking and black & white, no sight of santa anywhere

That Keith LP your on about is in a shop in Manchester U.K at the moment i think, you can add Clapton to the list of names who have played it, It must sound shit if no one want's to keep it

Reguarding the EDS1275, it's first studio recording is on the solo of "please read the letter" thats by Jimmy's own account so you never can tell? He did use another 12-string in the studio a FenderXII,

Dont be too upset with selling of your amps RedHouse, it sounds like you can make a new one for your self I wish i could!

[David Schwab]

..."since ive been loving you" solo was a tele...

The Stairway solo too. He used that brown tele a lot, and of course later had the string bender installed.

It's like with Pete Townshend. You always saw him with the LP's he used live, but on record he used one of Entwistle's Gretschs a lot. He said he was a big fan of Neil Young's guitar tone, so he used the Gretsch in the studio.

[Possum]

...

Yeah Communication Breakdown was a tele too. I have a Marshall Studio 15, they only made about 500 of them, have any of you Marshallheads ever played one of these and are they a typical Marshall tone in a small box or just a unique amp of its own? Power tubes are 6V6's....

[RedHouse]

... He did use another 12-string in the studio a FenderXII...

Yep, that's the one I mentioned

...a Vox and Fender 12 string...

Used that one on Stairway, and Livin Lovin Maid

...Dont be too upset with selling of your amps RedHouse, it sounds like you can make a new one for your self I wish i could!...

Well, it's just that I would like to have it around sometimes as it was a particularly good sounding one. Many of the JCM800's were kind of sterile or Ice Pick'y but this one was very ballzy (bollox'y?) and had a nice sustain quality going on.

Do you happen to have a copy of that magazine on hand? perhaps you might care to scan the article and email me, or even photocopy it and sent it to me Mum in Scotland?

(actually my wife's Mum, but she's really cool and makes me feel like my own mum)

I did some googl'ing for it and just can't hit on it well enough to get pic's.

[David Schwab]

Yeah Communication Breakdown was a tele too.

I thought so, but I wasn't sure. I heard that was a silvertone amp? I used to have one years ago.

I have a Marshall Studio 15, they only made about 500 of them, have any of you Marshallheads ever played one of these and are they a typical Marshall tone in a small box or just a unique amp of its own? Power tubes are 6V6's....

I used one in a studio once. I thought it had a great tone.